Celtics’ Brad Stevens Believes Heat Are NBA’s ‘Best’ At This

Though the matchup appears to favor Boston on paper, the Celtics desperately need not to fall into comfortability in their Eastern Conference finals matchup with the Miami Heat.

Don’t believe us? How about Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens?

Stevens, who was 17-10 against the Heat in his career coaching with the Celtics, is uniquely qualified to identify Miami’s strengths and weaknesses. It’s fairly obvious that we weren’t going to learn about those weaknesses prior to the series, but he was more than willing to give Miami its flowers in an appearance on NBC Sports Boston prior to Game 1.

“I think the team we’re playing is the best, maybe in the league, at not beating themselves,” Stevens said. “They don’t take possessions off, they’re so aggressive defensively and on offense they play with a purpose. When we’re at our very best, we’re doing those things. These guys will challenge you to do that because they’re trying to take it away. Their physicality into the ball is different.

“… Our turnover percentages against them have been terrible. We’ve got to take care of the ball, to make sure that we’re getting good shots and they’re not getting run outs. Those 10 points on runouts or 12 points on touchdown passes, whatever the case may be, those kill you in these series. It’s too hard to score in the halfcourt, you can’t give them those easy ones.”

Though you’ll never see two teams enter a series without propping each other up — Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra did plenty of that prior to Game 1 — there’s clearly an earned respect between these two teams as they enter a conference finals matchup for the third time in the last four seasons.